


Break

by Slapstix66



Series: Graffitipunk [1]
Category: Callisto 6 (Web Series)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Little Cass Character Study, Post 2.4, Pre-Relationship, She Almost Died, That Tends To Affect A Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-01 13:32:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17868179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slapstix66/pseuds/Slapstix66
Summary: There's nothing quite like almost dying to make a young superhero spiral.





	Break

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written anything for fun in a long time but damn does this show give me the feels needed to take the plunge again.

There was something unnerving about feeling one of your friends die. 

They hadn’t talked about it, the shock of the day still wearing off as they’d all split off to go to bed. But Cass was certain she wasn’t the only one who’d felt the gut-wrenching pain in her chest when Hopps died. One that didn’t have anything to do with the poison that had been soaking into her own lungs and everything to do with the Callisto 6 energy and the strange connection they had to each other.

They probably should talk about it. Cass wondered if they could get a group therapist.  _ Yes, we’re a group of amateur superheroes trying to save the city from some faceless evil who don’t know how to handle the trauma of having half our team nearly die cause we’re a bunch of barely-adults who already don’t know how to handle their emotions. Oh, also we’re superheroes, please don’t tell the cops _ .

That probably wouldn’t go over super well.

Cass knew she should probably be asleep, after six hours she’d expected the adrenaline pumping through her system to have gone away. But she still felt ready to jump into a fight at any moment. She had wondered if it was a side effect of her powers and had nearly asked the technopath to run some tests before realizing that they would probably (definitely) notice some of the other effects that her powers had had on her body.

Cass sighed, staring up at the ceiling as the urge to get up and do something coursed through her. She still felt like hell though, her muscles ached from the strain of the day and she was certain she’d cracked a rib during their crash landing in the streets of downtown Los Angeles. Plus her throat and lungs still burned like mad from the poison she’d inhaled, a constant reminder of just how close she’d come to death.

Being poisoned was probably the worst way to die. There was nothing heroic about choking out on the floor of a stolen police transport while watching the life drain out of one of your friends. The worst part was that she couldn’t fight it. Not with her fists. You can’t punch your way out of a cloud of poison. If she let her mind wander for too long she could almost feel… 

Cass shot up out of bed, throwing away the covers with enough force for the comforter to go flying into the wall. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. She was pretty sure she’d read something somewhere about people developing PTSD after being traumatized. She wondered if this counted. 

She glanced down at the sickly white-green skin still covering the majority of her body and shuttered. Definitely a little traumatized. She probably wasn’t alone in that, which did little to comfort her.

She shifted out of bed, her bare feet dragging against the rough carpet as she pattered over to the small bathroom attached to her room. The light stung her eyes as she flicked it on and it took her a moment to adjust, as she pawed blindly at the sink trying to turn the faucet on. People splash water on their faces when they’re going through shit, right? That’s what they did in movies anyways.

She watched as her own face came into focus and grimaced. She looked like shit. Her hair was matted down with dried blood from a cut she hadn’t noticed across her scalp and there was a gash on her lip that had started to swell slightly. Cass sighed and pulled a bright white washcloth out of the cupboard and let it soak in the slowly warming water. She stared, almost in shock at herself as she waited for the water to heat up. She hadn’t noticed it had begun to run hot until the mirror in front of her fogged over, obscuring her view.

It stung when she pressed it against the side of her head and she instantly regretted letting it get so hot. She briefly wondered if there was a chance she had a concussion before shaking the thought off. She watched as the washcloth turned red and her hair began to fall away from her body, hanging limply in front of her face. She probably should have let the medbot, Florence, take a look at her after all.

Cass reached forward and used her hand to wipe the steam off the mirror. And she watched herself, her bloodshot eyes tracing over every cut, every scratch, every patch of discolored skin…

She dropped the washcloth into the sink. 

Her fingers dug into the corners of the basin, causing the metal to squelch between her fingers as she tried to calm her breathing.  Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. She could swear that she heard Anton’s voice in the back of her head telling her to chant her mantra. She imagined herself punching the voice in response.

Cass pried her fingers off the sink and backed away, leaving the water running down onto the blood-soaked washcloth as she slid back into her room. She grabbed a dirty shirt up off the floor and tugged it on over her head, ignoring the way the collar tore as she darted out into the hallway.

Her instinct was to immediately go knocking down Oya’s door and getting some much needed best friend TLC. She disregarded the plan as soon as she reached Oya’s door and heard the tell-tale signs of the other woman’s light snoring. She turned around and slowly walked away, there wasn’t any need for both of them to not get any sleep.

It almost felt natural to end up in the training room with the amount of excess energy she had built up. Nothing helps with dealing with excess adrenaline like beating the crap out of a super heavy duty training dummy. Not that they were heavy duty enough to keep her from drop kicking one across a football field if she felt inclined to. Though it was probably better than nothing.

Naturally, she broke the first one in ten minutes. 

It was harder to pull her punches than it normally was, the fear and uncertainty twisting into anger as she replayed the fight over and over in her head. She wasn’t sure what they could have done better but there must have been something. Almost losing Hopps and Anton wasn’t a good sign if that was their best and she needed to believe that they could do this. She let herself get lost in the rhythm of her swings as her fists repeatedly impacted cold, hard rubber.

“Hey.” 

Cass paused mid-swing, her bruised, bloody knuckles hovering a couple inches away from the training dummy. Sweat poured down her face and she realized for the first time that she was breathing heavily, causing a sharp pain to ignite in her chest with every gasp. 

She saw someone move out of the corner of her eye and she glanced up in time to watch as Luma moved fully into the room. She’d returned fully to her own body, the bits of Hopps that had been there earlier had faded. Cass hoped that was a good sign. She wasn’t completely in tune with Luma’s powers or how they worked yet.

“Hey.” She grabbed the edge of her shirt and used it to wipe the sheen of sweat off her face. Cass immediately grimaced as she noticed the streaks of dried blood coating where it had made contact, reminding her she hadn’t actually finished cleaning herself up in the bathroom. “Guess you couldn’t sleep either?”

“No, it… there’s a lot to process.” Luma stepped a little farther into the room, almost tentatively. “Mind if I join you?”

“Sure, knock yourself out,” Cass paused. “Or… don’t do that. Bad wording, we’ve had enough injuries today...”

“You think?” Luma’s voice was strained even as she gave Cass a small smile. “Are you feeling any better? You’re still a little… um, green in places.”

Cass felt a shudder run down her spine and subconsciously reached up and touched her neck where she knew the skin still hadn’t quite returned to its original color. Still that same sicky white-green that Hopps had turned when she… 

“I’m fine, throat still hurts a little from the poison. But Hopps got hurt a lot worse than I did anyways, she’s the one everyone should be worried about, not me.” Cass shrugged, wiping the sweat off her palms onto her jeans, pointedly avoiding Luma’s gaze.

“You were nearly dead, Cass. We should be worried about you too.” Luma placed a hand on her shoulder and Cass realized that she’d managed to make her way across the room completely unheard. She wondered if that was something that’d come with the superpowers or if the taller woman had always been good at being sneaky. It was definitely an easier thing to think about than nearly being dead.

“I-I know it was close, but, clearly I’m alive so, no need to worry, right?” The words sounded shaky even to herself and one look at Luma told her the other woman wasn’t believing it either. 

“I’m not sure which one of us you’re trying to convince but I don’t think it’s working.”

“Yeah… hard to ignore, huh?” Cass shrugged, letting out a soft sigh. “It’s just, hard to process in a couple of hours.”

“You wanna punch something?”

“Yeah, I do. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? Punching things didn’t to shit today...” Cass sighed. “Besides, Hopps’ll kill me if I break all our training dummies cause I’m pissed off.” Cass gestured to the mutilated rubber man in front of her. “I’m having trouble controlling it. It happens sometimes when I’m feeling emotional.”

“You want to talk about it?” Luma glanced around. “In the living room. With tea?” 

“I just don’t want to be alone right now.” The realization hit her just as she said it. Despite what she’d been doing all evening, she just really didn’t want to be alone anymore. 

“You don’t have to be.” Luma wrapped an arm around Cass’s shoulders and gave her a small squeeze. “Come on, let’s get you some food.”

It was surprisingly easy to just let Luma take control and lead her away from the training facilities towards the kitchen. And it was even easier to eat every morsel of food Luma put in front of her. She hadn’t realized just how hungry she was but as Luma pointed out, she’d had a bit of a day.

“You know, we probably should go shopping soon. Like, make a group trip to Costco and just stock up on food. We’ve been out of coffee for a couple days and I think Sal’s getting a little antsy.”

“I feel like with our luck we’d get suck fighting off a horde of zombie cashiers…”

“Why would you put that out into the world?” Luma laughed, sitting down on the couch while placing a couple mugs of tea on the table in front of it. “Let’s see what’s on the late night news… maybe they aren’t talking about us anymore.”

“Maybe CEO Kylan died… wasn’t there an assassination thing he was worried about?” Cass asked as she sat down next to Luma, still snacking on a bag of trail mix Luma had found her. 

“I’m not sure we’re that lucky.” There was a long beat where they both stared expectantly at the dark tv screen, waiting for it to turn on. After a moment Luma groaned. “Lacy’s not here to turn the tv on… did we ever actually find the remote?” 

“Yeah, it was in a hundred little pieces though…” 

“Well then…” Luma got up and walked over to the tv and began the fiddle with the buttons on the side of it. “One of these is the on button…” 

As she said it the tv turned on, thankfully already tuned into the news station that they normally watched. The footage of Cass jumping from the dropship to the prison transport was playing again on the screen, with yet another reporter providing commentary on it, this one though was rattling off a bunch of numbers and talking about trajectory and Cass quickly tuned her out. 

Luma returned to the couch and they watched for a moment in silence as the footage switched to a shot of the controlled fall the prison transport had done at the end of the fight.

“Could you feel it, when she died?” Cass asked quietly. She almost didn’t want to know, but her curiosity got the better of her.

“Yeah… I…” Luma paused, leaning back against the couch without breaking eye contact with the tv. “I could feel you dying too.” Cass felt herself accidentally tear a hole in her shirt.

It hadn’t occurred to her that it was possible, she’d been so focused on Hopps actually dying and how she could feel it that it hadn’t clicked that might go both ways.

“Oh.” Cass watched as Luma’s hair began shifting to a familiar short oil slick, caught somewhere between her hair and Cass’s. “You’re, um. You’re hair’s changing again.”

“Oh, thanks.” Luma shook her head and Cass watched as her hair returned to its normal length and color. “You know how you said earlier that you have trouble controlling yourself when you’re emotional? I tend to have trouble controlling my powers when I’m emotional too.” 

“Does it hurt? When you lose control?” Cass wrung her hands together, ignoring the way the joints in her fingers protested against the immense amount of strength behind her nervous twitching. 

“Not really, it’s just kind of scary realizing you’ve literally started to become someone else…” Luma glanced down as Cass’s hands, her eyebrows knitting together before returning to meet Cass’s gaze. “Does it hurt when you lose control?”

Cass didn’t reply for several long seconds, not completely sure how to put what was happening to herself into words that someone else could understand. 

“You know those old movies where someone gets superpowers and they get super strong and suddenly the entire world is made out of cardboard and they keep on accidentally breaking things at first cause they aren't really sure how strong they actually are?” Cass waited just long enough for Luma to nod. “Well, what they forget to mention is that you're still made of the same stuff as everything else, all the breakable stuff. So even if your body heals itself so fast that no one notices, you still lose control and hurt yourself sometimes.” Cass held up her clenched fists so Luma could see the cuts and bruises across her knuckles that were rapidly healing themselves, already appearing nearly a week old despite how recent they actually were. 

“Hey… come here.” Luma reached out, wrapped her arm around Cass’s shoulders and pulled her closer. Cass felt Luma’s cheek drop against the top of her head as she cuddled in closer and gently wrapped an arm around Luma’s waist, careful not to accidentally crush the other woman.

Cass almost missed it with her eyes closed and her face pressed into Luma’s shoulder, but the familiar, soft yellow glow enveloping the two of them was unforgettable. 

Instantly there was a flood of relief and exhaustion that washed over her body. She cracked her eyes open in time to watch her bruised knuckles heal over completely and let out a sigh as the sharp pain in her ribs subsided to a gentle thrum. And a pain she hadn’t even been consciously aware of throughout her body was healed as her muscles healed almost instantly, replaced with a warmth that Cass certainly didn’t associate with her first encounter with the Callisto 6 energy. 

“We’ll figure it out, don’t worry.”

And for the first time since the Expo, Cass was starting to believe it.


End file.
